Troubleshooting

Find your symptom in the list, then follow the fix. If you don’t see your issue, please open an issue with your OS, DAW, INTERSECT version (visible at the bottom of SET), and a short description of what you tried.

Install & loading

My DAW doesn’t see the plugin after I install it

  • Confirm the plugin landed in the correct folder for your format. See Installation → Plugin install paths.
  • Rescan plugins in your DAW (most DAWs have a “Rescan VST3” or “Scan for new plug-ins” command).
  • Restart the DAW.

macOS says “INTERSECT is damaged and can’t be opened”

INTERSECT release builds are unsigned. macOS quarantines unsigned plugins on first launch. Clear the flags:

xattr -cr ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/VST3/INTERSECT.vst3
xattr -cr ~/Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/INTERSECT.component
xattr -cr /Applications/INTERSECT.app

Then relaunch the DAW (or the standalone app).

The UI is too small or too large

Open SET in the header bar and use Scale Up / Scale Down. The UI scales from 0.5x to 3.0x in 0.25 steps. The chosen scale is saved per user, not per session.

Plugin loads but the editor shows missing samples

INTERSECT stores sample file paths in the session, not the audio data itself. If a file has moved or been renamed, the editor shows a missing-sample warning. Either move the file back to its original path, or load the file again into the same session slot.

Audio & playback

A slice doesn’t make sound when I play its MIDI note

Check, in order:

  1. MIDI routing. Confirm your DAW track is routed to INTERSECT and the track is armed.
  2. Note mapping. The slice’s NOTE (or LOW–HIGH range) must include the note you’re playing. The FM button auto-selects the slice for the note you just played — turn it on temporarily to confirm.
  3. Mute group. If two slices share the same mute group, the latest note-on chokes earlier ones.
  4. Voice budget. If many notes are held, low-priority voices get stolen. Raise the global VOICES parameter (1–31).
  5. Master gain. Check the Amp module’s GAIN and the filter CUT — if cutoff is at the floor and the filter is on, the slice will be silent.
  6. PANIC. If something appears stuck, press PANIC in the header bar.

The sample plays at the wrong tempo when I load a session

Two common causes:

  • STRETCH is on, but the sample’s BPM field doesn’t match the file’s real tempo. Either turn STRETCH off, or pick a slice that loops at a known length and use SET BPM to recalculate the BPM value automatically.
  • ALGO is Repitch with STRETCH on, in which case PITCH and TUNE become BPM-derived read-only displays. This is intentional — switch to Signalsmith or Bungee if you want independent pitch control.

Bungee playback sounds metallic

Bungee is a granular engine. For sustained, tonal material, set GRAIN to Smooth. Fast is best for transient/percussive material.

Changing the filter cutoff while a note is held doesn’t change the sound

Filter parameters resolve at note-on, so live cutoff edits only affect the next note triggered. This is by design — automate via your DAW’s note-on events instead of mid-note CC sweeps.

Notes don’t stop when the host stops transport

INTERSECT responds to All Notes Off (CC 123) and All Sound Off (CC 120). Some hosts don’t send these on stop. If you hit this, the PANIC button is the manual equivalent.

A loop has a click or seam at the loop point

Raise the FADE parameter in the Playback module — it sets the equal-power crossfade length as a percentage of the slice. Start around 5–10% for short loops; longer loops can tolerate more.

MIDI

NRPN editing doesn’t work in Ableton Live

This is a known host-side limitation. Ableton intercepts the NRPN data bytes (CC 96/97) before the plugin sees them, so the plugin never gets the increment/decrement events. There is no workaround on the INTERSECT side. See NRPN MIDI routing for details.

NRPN edits work in standalone but not when hosted

Some DAWs strip NRPN CCs from MIDI tracks routed to plugins. Try sending the same MIDI directly to the standalone build first — if that works, the issue is host MIDI routing, not INTERSECT.

Slice doesn’t trigger from MIDI even though everything looks right

  • Is the slice you expect actually selected? Toggle FM and play the note to confirm.
  • Check whether another slice with the same mute group fired immediately after the one you intended.
  • If you’re using slice note ranges, the slice’s LOW–HIGH must contain the note. Slice ranges are ignored for Repitch + STRETCH (those are trigger-zone only).

Stem separation

“ONNX Runtime not found” or START is disabled

You need to download and activate an ONNX Runtime bundle. Open SET → Stem Separation → ONNX Runtime and pick the bundle for your platform (CPU is the simplest if you’re unsure). Restart INTERSECT after the bundle installs. See Installation → Stem separation setup.

START says “No models”

After the runtime is installed, you still need to download at least one stem model. Open SET → Stem Separation → Download Models and pick a BS-RoFormer model.

CUDA bundle fails to load on Linux

Verify that libcudart.so.12 (or .so.13, depending on the bundle you picked) and libcudnn.so.9 are present and findable by the dynamic loader:

ldconfig -p | grep -E 'cudart|cudnn'

If the standalone INTERSECT app can use CUDA but a Flatpak-hosted DAW can’t, see Installation → Linux NVIDIA CUDA for the Flatseal LD_LIBRARY_PATH workaround.

Stem export is greyed out on Intel macOS

ONNX Runtime 1.24 dropped x86_64 macOS support, so stem separation isn’t available on Intel Macs. Apple Silicon is fully supported. The stem panel surfaces this as “Not available” instead of failing on START.

Stem export is slow on CPU

That’s expected — BS-RoFormer is compute-heavy. On a modern desktop CPU, expect minutes per minute of audio. A supported GPU bundle is dramatically faster; see Installation → Stem separation setup.

Themes

My custom theme doesn’t appear in the SET → Themes list

  • The file must end in .intersectstyle.
  • The file must be in the user themes folder, not a subfolder. See Themes → Where themes live.
  • Restart the plugin — themes are read once at startup, not live.

My theme loads but the colours look wrong

You may have mixed legacy keys (background:, lockActive:, etc.) with modern keys (surface1:, color5:). When both are present, the modern key wins. Settle on one set — preferably the modern keys. See Themes → Legacy keys.

Colours look fine in the editor but wrong in the popup menus

Popup menus draw on surface2. If your theme has a similar surface2 and surface4, hover highlights look flat. Increase the contrast between those two values.

Sessions

A session I saved no longer recalls

INTERSECT writes a state version on every save. Loads accept the current version and several versions back (currently v19 through v24). If you’ve downgraded the plugin to an older build than the one that saved the session, the old build may refuse to load it. Upgrade to the newer build and the session will load.

After loading a session, the speed/pitch of a sample is off

This happens when the project sample rate differs from what the sample was recorded at. INTERSECT resamples on load and corrects for this — make sure your project sample rate is set before opening the session, not after.

Still stuck

Open a GitHub issue with:

  • INTERSECT version (visible at the bottom of the SET popup)
  • Operating system + version
  • DAW + version (or “standalone”)
  • A short description of the steps that reproduce the problem
  • Any text from the header status bar (click warning/error text to copy it to the clipboard)